Senate Judiciary committee advances wide bill package; defers TRO jail-time increase and debates reapportionment, juror processes and court funding

The Senate Committee on Judiciary met Jan. 28 in Room 016 and by videoconference to consider a multi-bill package, advancing measures on jury administration, court-appointed counsel pay, additional judgeships, family-court compensation and reapportionment while deferring one measure on temporary restraining orders.

The hearing matters because it moves multiple criminal-justice, court-administration and constitutional-amendment proposals closer to final action and records substantive debate on how the judiciary will implement changes such as online juror forms, pay adjustments for jurors and lawyers, and a pilot childcare program for parties and witnesses.

Darsha Forrester, deputy public defender, testified in opposition to SB94, which would raise the mandatory minimum jail term for a first conviction of knowingly or intentionally violating a temporary restraining order from 48 to 72 hours. "We don't see what the efficacy is gonna be," Forrester said, arguing the proposal would "lump everybody into one category without any distinction" between minor technical violations and threatening conduct and urging either deferral or language that requires mental-health assessment and tailored responses. Angeline Mercado, executive director of the Hawaii State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, also urged deferral and warned that the bill's mental-health assessment language could produce harmful conflations of causality and that the State lacks sufficient qualified evaluators to perform the assessments the bill would require.

The committee deferred SB94, with the chair citing the measure's narrow focus on TROs and the existence of several companion bills addressing protection-order violations.

Law and consumer-finance topics drew extended discussion. Marvin Dang, testifying for the Hawaii Financial Services Association on SB115 (attachment/execution of real property), asked the committee to clarify that the exemption applies to creditor attachment and not real-property taxation and to consider limiting the exemption to primary residences. Committee discussion centered on raising both exemption categories to $90,000 and removing gendered language; the chair recommended passage with amendments to make the definition gender-neutral and set the exemption at $90,000.

SB124, a proposed constitutional amendment to require reapportionment be based on resident population counted…